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arxiv: 2410.18880 · v2 · submitted 2024-10-24 · 🧮 math.ST · math.PR· stat.TH

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Can we spot a fake?

Grigoris Paouris, Roman Vershynin, Shahar Mendelson

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classification 🧮 math.ST math.PRstat.TH
keywords dataadversaryfakeradiusarbitraryboundfixedgaussian
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The problem of detecting fake data inspires the following seemingly simple mathematical question. Sample a data point $X$ from the standard normal distribution in $\mathbb{R}^n$. An adversary observes $X$ and corrupts it by adding a vector $rt$, where they can choose any vector $t$ from a fixed set $T$ of the adversary's ``tricks'', and where $r>0$ is a fixed radius. The adversary's choice of $t=t(X)$ may depend on the true data $X$. The adversary wants to hide the corruption by making the fake data $X+rt$ statistically indistinguishable from the real data $X$. What is the largest radius $r=r(T)$ for which the adversary can create an undetectable fake? We show that for highly symmetric sets $T$, the detectability radius $r(T)$ is approximately twice the scaled Gaussian width of $T$. The upper bound actually holds for arbitrary sets $T$ and generalizes to arbitrary, non-Gaussian distributions of real data $X$. The lower bound may fail for not highly symmetric $T$, but we conjecture that this problem can be solved by considering the focused version of the Gaussian width of $T$, which focuses on the most important directions of $T$.

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